Robert Frost Mending Wall Summary

This poem is in second Frost book of poetry “North of Boston”; book was published after return to US from England. R. Frost wrote poem with strong feeling of being homesick for the farm in England where he lived for nine years. In those nine years on living on the farm he and his neighbor had tradition of walking next to their wall that was separating their farms. It is considered that Mending wall is autobiographical poem, which shows Frost life and his routine that he had with his neighbor in New Hampshire. ("Robert Frost." Bio)

The poem is written in blank verse, it means that lines that are not rhymed and have five iambs in each line. The poem is not written in stanzas but it has simple 45 lines without complicated words. Poem consists of internal rhyme and uses assonance in some of ending terms. Overall blank verse is also giving a grater meaning to the poem.

In the poem by R. Frost Mending wall we can find two characters. First one is narrator and second one is his neighbor, two farm owners. Every spring they meet up and repair the wall that is dividing their property. In the poem we can observe that those two neighbors are totally different from each other’s and that they see process of repairing wall and purpose of the wall in different way. Neighbor sees the wall like a boundary that is dividing two properties and he is saying old adage: “good fences makes good neighbors” (45). Narrator has opposite attitude towards wall and doesn’t see purpose for the wall;